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Florence Kelley's Crusade
Colleen Campbell Between 1870 and 1890, rapid changes occurred in Chicago. The population increased by 268 percent; much of this number included immigrants. They were new to the land and did not know the prevailing language. Those changes plus rapid industrialization and periodic depressions led to social pressures, strikes, violence, and an increasing number of poor residents. As these problems grew, people looked toward leaders and politicians. Florence Kelley was a woman who was already doing her part to fix these pressing problems. She played a large part in reforming the laws and privileges of adults and children in the workplace, an urgent national priority. At this time, children worked in factories with dangerous machines. Often, they worked up to twelve hours a day, six days a week. They did not go to school and were usually tired and sick. A book Florence read, when only seven years of age, along with her father's words convinced her to spend her life telling people the truth about the lives of the poor children. Her father had said, "life could never be right for all children until people knew about the lives of the poor." During Florence's years in college, she studied the history of working children and went on to pursue a degree in law. At this time, however, very few women went to college; fewer went to law school. Florence was determined to change the laws and knew it was not going to be easy to convince the law-
makers. Therefore, she went to law school to learn how to fight her own battles in court. She was certain she would first have to learn the facts. In 1891 the best place to find information about the poor was the Hull-House. The women who lived there worked to solve the city's worst issues, including housing of the poor. There, they nourished and educated impoverished families. The leader, Jane Addams, welcomed Florence at once. As she began to study the lives of the poor, she found that some of the facts she needed were not in books of any sort. People paid very little attention to the poor. Not giving up, she decided she would gather the information herself. She went into the city and started to survey poor families. The results were astonishing and to Florence Kelley, most disturbing. Both adults and children worked in very poor conditions. The workplaces were dirty, noisy, and had no windows. The results of Kelley's surveys plus the encouragement of Hull-House gave her the pioneering enthusiasm for a new movement. She began to speak out at churches, meetings, clubs, or wherever people would listen. Kelley went so far as to take groups of people into the poorest areas of the city so that they could see how the impoverished worked and lived. On her own, she explored sweatshops and other terrible working areas. She recorded any and all information and turned in a report to the legislature. Her hard work paid off. As a result of Kelley's 1892 sweatshop report, the legislature appointed a committee to investigate further. Kelley guided the committee members through some of Chicago's sweatshops, where they saw firsthand the fatigued employees and their horrible working conditions. The residents of Hull-House used that opportunity to encourage legislative action. The commission received two proposals, one from Florence Kelley. Her proposal consisted of prohibition of the employment of women and minors under eighteen years of age and provided creation of a state factory inspector's office. The bill passed in May 1893. Through this, Florence strengthened her crusade to alter laws concerning child labor. Governor Altgeld recognized Kelley's proposal of a factory inspector's office and appointed her Chief Factory Inspector of Illinois in July 1893. She was the first woman to head a state factory inspection department. Florence took her job seriously. In 1897 Kelley promoted a bill in the Illinois legislature to limit the work hours of children to ten a day and sixty a week. In 1898 Kelley attended the organizational meeting of the National Consumers' League in New York. In the fall she helped organize the Illinois Consumer's League. She oversaw an association that included upper-class, middle-class, and working-class members. One historian claimed that under Kelley's leadership from its founding to her death in 1932 the league became, after 1900, the single-most-important lobbying group for the passage of labor and social legislation at the state and federal levels. Florence Kelley was a leading resident among the many others at Hull-House, including Ellen Gates Starr and Julia Lathrop. Because of their work, Hull-House not only became a neighborhood cultural center but an international gathering place for planning social reform.—[From Florence Kelley, Notes of Sixty Years; Josephine Goldmark, Impatient Crusader; Lynn Gordon, "Women and the Anti-Child Labor Movement in Illinois, 1890-1920," Social Service Review (June 1977); Sandra Harmon, "Florence Kelley in Illinois," Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society (Autumn 1981); Carol Sailer, Florence Kelley; Katheryn Sklar, Florence Kelley and the Nation's Work.]
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